Sugar and the Edge of France, 1800-1860
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DROITS AND FRONTIÈRES: SUGAR AND THE EDGE OF FRANCE, 1800-1860 by Jonna M. Yarrington ____________________________ A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the SCHOOL OF ANTHROPOLOGY In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2014 UMI Number: 1555417 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI 1555417 Published by ProQuest LLC (2014). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, MI 48106 - 1346 2 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This thesis has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this thesis are allowable without special permission, provided that an accurate acknowledgment of the source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in his or her judgment the proposed use of the material is in the interests of scholarship. In all other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author. SIGNED: Jonna M. Yarrington APPROVAL BY THESIS DIRECTOR This thesis has been approved on the date shown below: Brackette F. Williams February 14, 2014 Associate Professor of Anthropology 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT................................................................ 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......................................... 5 INTRODUCTION....................................................... 6 CHAPTER 1: THE OVERSEAS................................ 14 The Plantation Complex.................................... 14 Escalating Ecological Disaster.......................... 23 Labor Relations................................................. 25 Political Relations............................................. 30 CHAPTER 2: THE HEXAGON................................. 36 Political Conditions........................................... 37 Science Serving the State.................................. 42 Land and Labor Relations................................. 49 Financing Possibility......................................... 63 CHAPTER 3: CONJUNCTION................................. 73 Conjoining Differences..................................... 74 Blocs and Policy................................................ 79 Liberalization and the Sugar Question.............. 100 CHAPTER 4: GUYANE............................................. 110 The French Claim.............................................. 113 Early Schemes and Scams................................. 120 At the Conjunction............................................ 132 Devil’s Island.................................................... 142 CONCLUSION........................................................... 147 Frontières.......................................................... 151 Droits................................................................. 154 Ownership and Belonging................................. 155 APPENDIX ................................................................ 156 REFERENCES............................................................ 157 4 ABSTRACT In the 1700s, French colonies in the Caribbean produced massive amounts of sugar cane for shipment exclusively to France. The French Revolution of 1789 precipitated long years of economic conflict between England and France, during which French scientists and entrepreneurs worked to develop technology and capital investment to produce sugar on the French mainland from European-grown beets. Economic and agricultural viability of mass production of beet sugar was established by 1812 and used to promote French autarky (self-sufficiency) in emerging ideologies of economic nationalism. Beet sugar’s equivalence to cane sugar meant direct competition with colonial cane, marking a period of “conjunction,” when questions of colonial belonging and rights to participation in markets were actively contested in Paris as debates over tariff and bounty legislation. New forms of symbolic inclusion and exclusion of French colonies were produced—with important results for the cane sugar complex, colonial producers, and the system of French trade relations. Guyane Française (French Guiana) provides the prime illustrative case of colonial changes due to the sugar conjunction. A colony in northeastern South America, Guyane had been claimed by France since the early seventeenth century, but remained sparsely populated and experienced relatively weak development of the cane sugar complex. Thus, during and following the sugar conjunction, the French moved to make the colony a place for exile of state prisoners, rather than continue to develop it for cane cultivation and sugar production. The first shipment of convicts—stripped of their French citizenship before departure—arrived in Guyane in 1852 as the first prisoners in the penal colony that came to be called Devil’s Island. 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Gratitude goes first to Brackette F. Williams, an inspiring scholar and mentor, who gives unselfishly to her students. I am equally grateful to Drexel G. Woodson, whose advice I always strive to follow and who offered valuable feedback at all stages of this project. Thank you also to Mamadou Baro, for time and expertise. I thank the faculty at the University of Arizona School of Anthropology, including especially Norma Mendoza-Denton, Thomas Park, Jennifer Roth-Gordon, Thomas Sheridan, and Richard Stoffle. Many thanks to Richard Price and Sally Price for their tireless encouragement and advice. I am grateful for support and assistance from a number of scholars who have been excellent professors, mentors, and pen pals, including Sharla Blank, Yarimar Bonilla, Jonathan Glasser, Kevin Honeycutt, Karen Richman, Apostolos Rofaelas, Kathleen Van Vlack, Kevin Yelvington, and Brad Weiss. James F. Harris and his wife Andrea deserve their own sentence for very special thanks. Two remarkable educators in Albemarle County, Virginia inspired me and contributed directly to this research a decade ago (though we didn’t know it at the time), Sharon Lloyd and Lance Weisend. Acknowledgement goes to family and friends—Emily Boynton, Brian Callam and April Benza, Mary Ann Carrigan, Ron and Rayna Hanna, Dellinda Hueston, Kestrel Innes-Wimsatt, Evan Knappenberger, Krystol Large, Audrey and Jason Lockwood, Thalia Iraí Longoria, Peggy Lloyd Mahurin, Rebecca Mountain, Amanda Tira Andrei and Colton O’Connor, Jessica Pfaffendorf, Paula Rondon-Burgos, Kristofer Titus, Gabrielle and Jose Vincent, and Ronnie and the late Barbara Yarrington. Thank you for your kindness and patience. Many thanks to my peers at the School of Anthropology. I would especially like to thank Evelyn “Double Mum” Lloyd and Nancy Yarrington for all of their personal advice over the years. I am grateful to Mary Hanna, my mother, for all she does and has done. My work is dedicated to her and to the memory of Leona E. Conte, my grandmother and an astute observer of human life. Finally, the inimitable Landon Yarrington has been my unfailing companion on journeys together through space and time. My own Eledil. I take full responsibility for any and all remaining errors. 6 INTRODUCTION Forgetting, I would even say historical error, is an essential factor in the creation of a nation. –Ernest Renan ([1869] 1997, 13)1 This thesis argues that the social, political, and economic complex in the French Antilles based on sugar cane production for European consumption, was put in explicit, direct competition in the early nineteenth century with a new type of sugar made from beets. The invention of sugar from beets made possible the growing and processing of sugar in mainland France, rather than in tropical, overseas colonies. The discovery of a new sugar source led to what I term a period of “conjunction” between 1800 and 1860, during which debates raged over whether to protect French producers of each sugar equally or to favor one over the other. The battle was fought between a long-established cane sugar bloc, representing the Antillean plantocracy and cane-related industries, and a coalescing beet sugar bloc arguing for a new definition of nationalism in economic and territorial terms. The struggle was one of access and thus of status in relation to the nation. Access to the French sugar market, which determined taxes and prices, was weighed in terms of national territorial contiguity versus the importance of inclusion of the French-claimed overseas territories, which were developed for the purpose of establishing cane plantations. The effect of the sugar conjunction was major in the French sugar market and for the sugar colonies. French Antillean economies tied to sugar prices were experiencing a number of increasing pressures compounding the effects of the new and acute competition. These included mounting ecological disaster spurred by overuse of land that was long considered to be